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SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

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Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#31

Post by whizzter »

bayindirh wrote: post #6
pjmlp wrote: post #3

Well, I guess it was either them or Oracle, given previous acquisition rumours.

Given Oracle's tendency to use pillows on processor architectures and bury them at night, Softbank is possibly the better of two evils? Jokes aside, I don't believe Oracle would evolve the A1s beyond what they need, and stagnate them for years instead.

I think SB might've upped the bid a bit extra with Oracle as the other suitor. With Graviton and Ampere processors owned by hyperscalers it would've been a very unfortunate time for the ARM server market to become stagnant.

Right now ARM is in a golden position to take server market pieces, higher compute densities with simpler i-set and good software support thanks to years of mobile and now Apple support (most language implementators wants things to run on Mac's so bugs and perf have been getting fixed)

If Oracle would've bought them, third parties (in this case including both Microsoft with Azure and Google) would probably have held back on ARM investments (not to mention smaller operators), Qualcomm being in lawsuit mode would also had sown doubt, maybe some other manufacturer would introduce chips in the meanwhile but they would be small and given time Risc-V might even pop up on the horizon as an alternative hurting ARM on server chances even more.

Now they're "independant", with better software support than ever, guaranteeing availability to smaller parties (at a time when many of those are outside the US and wanting alternatives) and a chance to benefit from vertical integration.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#32

Post by alephnerd »

A lot of people are ignoring the fact that SoftBank Group is also one of the largest players in the telco market globally (that's how they started) [0] and that played a role in their Arm strategy and Eutelsat OneWeb strategy.

It's useful to look at the Ampere acquisition from the same lens, as Ampere is heavily used for telco usecases [1]

SoftBank Group has heavily invested in O-RAN to act as the base technology for what will become 6G, and they have been making a number of partnerships, investments, and acquisitions specifically around this [2][3].

SoftBank has been working on a 6G/Beyond 5G strategy for several years now [4] - primarily targeting embedded usecases such as autonomous vehicles [5][6]

[0] - https://www.softbank.jp/en/

[1] - https://amperecomputing.com/press/ampere-accelerates-expansi...

[2] - https://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/news/press/sbkk/2024/2024022...

[3] - https://www.o-ran.org/membership

[4] - https://www.suasnews.com/2021/08/softbank-corp-unveils-6g-co...

[5] - https://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/technology/research/news/051...

[6] - https://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/technology/research/news/069...

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#34

Post by terinjokes »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #8
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #2

Ampere is still the only people making a decent purchaseable ARM server. Not loving the idea of there being a bunch of new debt hovering over them now.

What about https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro/rack#

No BMC, severally limiting remote management, so operations teams responsible for physical servers don't want to touch it.

JetKVM is a remote KVM, not remote management. It does not have the same integration into the internals of a server.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#36

Post by alephnerd »

zoobab wrote: post #35

Softbank is BigOil money.

Wrong. It's telco money - SoftBank Group is primarily a telco vendor and provider, and works closely with NEC, DoCoMo, T-Mobile, Vodafone, and Airtel.

SoftBank Vision Fund is a separate subgroup of SoftBank targeted at VC, and was largely operated and managed by ex-Deustche Bank alumni due to Rajeev Misra and Colin Fan poaching their colleagues like Ziyad Al-Ashaikh (the guy who helped land the Saudi PIF deal), Akshay Naheta, Munich Verma, Saleh Romeih, etc

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#37

Post by klelatti »

whizzter wrote: post #30
klelatti wrote: post #5

So Softbank now competes with Arm's customers and (unless I've missed something on new governance arrangements) also gets access to confidential information on Arm's customers' businesses (plans, volumes etc). Hmmm.

It kinda makes sense though, ARM has been creeping upwards over the years and yet afaik outside of Ampere no ARM server supplier has become serious (outside of inhouse variants such as Amazon Graviton). So combining ARM and Ampere operations doesn't hurt any current big customers in the mobile field (apart from perhaps Qualcomm but they're in lawsuit mode there anyhow). They also make sure to make the ARM alternative…

Largely agree. Arm / Softbank is in a tricky place if there are no credible customers in a given market. Does it just sit on its hands or actually get out there and build some chips! It has helped fund or help some startups that were using Arm designs to get into new markets (eg Annapurna Labs) but sometimes that doesn't work out at all (Nuvia!)

And to be fair I think Rene Haas has been fairly upfront about changing their approach.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#38

Post by dvdkon »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #8
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #2

Ampere is still the only people making a decent purchaseable ARM server. Not loving the idea of there being a bunch of new debt hovering over them now.

What about https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro/rack#

In addition to the problems other people have pointed out, it just doesn't have comparable specs to something like Ampere's Altra or AMD's Epyc.

24 CPU cores and 192 GB of memory might be enough for a small company's single on-site server, but those will likely want lots of storage and not want to deal with an exotic platform. Anyone who's willing to deal with ARM and macOS on a server will likely want a lot more performance per 1U.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#39

Post by Havoc »

alephnerd wrote: post #36
zoobab wrote: post #35

Softbank is BigOil money.

Wrong. It's telco money - SoftBank Group is primarily a telco vendor and provider, and works closely with NEC, DoCoMo, T-Mobile, Vodafone, and Airtel. SoftBank Vision Fund is a separate subgroup of SoftBank targeted at VC, and was largely operated and managed by ex-Deustche Bank alumni due to Rajeev Misra and Colin Fan poaching their colleagues like Ziyad Al-Ashaikh (the guy who helped land the Saudi PIF deal), Aksha…

The fund LPs are definitely oil heavy so wouldn’t say he’s wrong

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#40

Post by alephnerd »

Havoc wrote: post #39
alephnerd wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. It's telco money - SoftBank Group is primarily a telco vendor and provider, and works closely with NEC, DoCoMo, T-Mobile, Vodafone, and Airtel. SoftBank Vision Fund is a separate subgroup of SoftBank targeted at VC, and was largely operated and managed by ex-Deustche Bank alumni due to Rajeev Misra and Colin Fan poaching their colleagues like Ziyad Al-Ashaikh (the guy who helped land the Saudi PIF deal), Aksha…

The fund LPs are definitely oil heavy so wouldn’t say he’s wrong

In Vision Fund yes, but Vision Fund is just a part of the larger SoftBank Group, and did NOT partake in this transaction. This was a transaction done by SoftBank Group directly.

And much of Vision Fund's MENA LPs would leave if a couple key Vision Fund partners were to leave - they did the same with Desutche Bank.

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